I call this a nature poem , a beautiful poem about the winter landscape. Do not project yourself on to the environment and call it by the name of what goes on in your mind, says the poet. When we perceive the snow-covered landscape we look at as it is and not humanize it ascribing qualities of bleakness and despair that may be prevailing in our preoccupied minds. One must have a mind of winter to perceive its beauty.

On the other hand, be the winter you are perceiving, with the junipers shagged with ice and regard the frost and the boughs of the pine trees crusted with snow as though you too were, with the mind of the winter, engaged with them as part of the landscape. As if you too have been cold a long time and crusted with ice .

There is nothing bleak about the wind, which blows in the leaves, and has always been blowing irrespective of the state of your mind. The wind is not howling or being plaintive merely and you carry with you your own misery, that has nothing to do with the sound of the wind. The listener should listen in the snow and nothing himself , and behold nothing that is not there and the nothing that is there.That is how the beauty of the place will come home to him.

I love the amazing visual imagery in “pine trees crusted with snow” , ‘junipers shagged with ice”, spruces rough in the distant glitter”. You now have a mind of winter and you behold the boughs of the pines which seem so rough and shaggy, being crusted with ice , they have been cold a long time, you see. A kind of time-lapse picture of snow slowly forming a crust around the bare branches and when the mind of winter beholds it , it is already crusted and can only see the branches swathed in ice. Now when the mind of winter extends its glances across the landscape it will perceive the spruces rough in the distant glitter, when the sun shines brightly on them. For God’s sake let not the mind perceive all this as an extension of one’s own misery because there is nothing bleak about it. Incidentally , watch out for the roughness image that continues throughout. The crust of ice is rough, the junipers shagged, and the spruces rough in their sun-glitter. But the roughness here enhances beauty adding to its texture, the visual splendor of the landscape instead of depressing, with the loss of natural shape by the trees and the boughs.